Why do people leave bequests? For love or self-interest?

This paper presents a brief exposition of three theoretical models of household behavior and shows that these models have very different implications for bequest motives and bequest division, surveys previous empirical studies on bequest motives and bequest division, presents unique survey data on bequest motives and bequest division in four countries, shows that there are large inter-country differences in the degree of selfishness and altruism, with the Japanese and Chinese being predominantly selfish and Indians and Americans being predominantly altruistic, and argues that differences in religiosity appear to be the main cause of inter-country differences in the degree of selfishness and altruism.